San Francisco Opera invites you and your family to attend FREE screenings of our Opera-in-an-Hour Movies presented throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. To learn about where you can catch a screening of our family friendly operas, click here.

With the arrival of the newest member of the British royal family, we here at San Francisco Opera decided to take a look at the members of nobility seen throughout opera to see what kind of lessons they could impart to the world's newest prince. Compiled here are a selection of lessons from twelve of our favorite operas that we think will serve the future king well.

Have you seen the August issue of Opera News? The cover story is called “Opera’s Next Wave: The Voices and Faces of the Future.” It’s a great article, and well worth reading while it’s still out on newsstands. Here at San Francisco Opera, we couldn’t help but swell with pride at how many familiar faces graced the pages of this article. Quite a good number of these up and coming opera stars have performed on the War Memorial Opera House stage in the last several years or are scheduled to make debuts in the near future. Which of these fine young musicians, which Opera News predicts will “break out and become major forces in the field in the coming decade,” have we brought to Bay Area audiences lately? Allow us a trip down memory lane. [Left: Luca Pisaroni in The Marriage of Figaro]

My dear friend Barbara was an opera aficionado and was so delighted she felt well enough to attend the Ring cycle last year. Barbara had been fighting non-Hodgkin’s B lymphoma for over a year and after chemo and radiation, she was exhausted. Many times, she would tell me about the various operas she had experienced in different cities (New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco among others). We were making plans for me to attend my first opera with her when I developed a retroperitoneal liposarcoma (a large cancerous tumor) that needed surgery on October 19, 2011, and radiation starting in January.

San Francisco Opera will present Verdi’s Attila this June starring superstar bass Ferruccio Furlanetto. Co-produced with Milan’s Teatro alla Scala and directed by Gabriele Lavia, the new production is unusual and distinctive because it is set in three different periods of Italy’s history: ancient Rome circa 450 AD; the Viennese occupation of the early 1800’s; and the present day. Our Music Director Nicola Luisotti conducted the production in Milan and will conduct it here in June. He has this to say about the production:

Introduction

Backstage at San Francisco Opera is a fascinating, fast-moving, mysterious and sacred space for the Company’s singers, musicians, dancers, technicians and production crews. Musical and staging rehearsals are on-going, scenery is loaded in and taken out, lighting cues are set, costumes and wigs are moved around and everything is made ready to receive the audience. From the principal singers, chorus and orchestra musicians to the creative teams for each opera, in addition to the many talented folks who don’t take a bow on stage, this blog offers unique insight, both thought-provoking and light-hearted, into the life backstage at San Francisco Opera.